Petscop Game Theory: Creepypasta That’s Real — Part One

Usually if I have any sort of disclaimers, it’s to prepare you for an unpopular opinion. This time, it’s because the details ahead involve the circumstances of a girl killed in therapy. The disclaimer is mostly for the second part because I will be spending this first part explaining a few things to help you understand why it’s grown into a big deal.

I have a lot of hobbies, video games being the biggest one. There are many sub-hobbies within video games that I am constantly learning about, game design being only one example. One of the sub-hobbies of mine deals with theories. We all theorize our own superhero/supervillain battles and who might win because of all of the other factors revolving around the idea, but game theory is a little different.

There is a YouTube channel called Game Theory (under “The Game Theorists” channel) that I watch. Created by Matthew “MatPat” Patrick, it was a dream come true for me in finding this. The first theory I watched dealt with Mega Man. It was interesting for me to watch because I always toy with the idea of reality inside of fictional words (because those worlds were spawned from reality, after all). Mega Man is also an important franchise to me, so it was a perfect formula to keep me watching throughout these years. I’ll have been watching for four years come this December. (What a “loyal theorist” I am, as he often refers to his fanbase.)

A video came out on Aug. 20 this year under the title “Game Theory: Petscop – The Scariest Game You’ll NEVER Play.” Being the “loyal theorist” that I am, I watched it. I had no clue what the video was about, let alone what the game might be. I figured it was some obscure internet/PC game that was growing quickly to be a fad. I’m not wrong, except that it’s a game that we probably won’t be able to play (as the title suggests).

Now that you’ve been somewhat introduced to Game Theory, you need to know a little background on what creepypasta is. Creepypasta is basically scary legends and stories (fictional) that are intended to scare you, often spread around as truth to amplify the fear behind the story to get a real scare out of you. A common example of this is Slender Man.

One creepypasta was about a beloved video game, The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. The game was created for the Nintendo 64 console. The story is called “Ben Drowned.” Some guy buys the used game at a garage sale only to find out that it is haunted by its previous owner, a kid who drowned.

The story tells of all of the weird things that happened to the new owner while he was playing the game. He’d played the game before, which is how he knew something wasn’t right. You might not be able to relate, but I used to have nightmares about haunted games. A game is programmed to do very particular and specific things. Sometimes you find missing code in some form, either unfinished or completely missing code that causes natural “glitching” in the game. It’s a little freaky at first, but understanding the code and design helps to justify the glitch.

The nightmare is a little different. How scary would it be for you to play a game you know so well only for it to behave oddly? How put-off would you be if the game does something that it couldn’t possibly do because of a glitch? How terrified would you be if the game started talking to you?

Ben Drowned is the epitome of that type of nightmare. I hadn’t known the story was fake when I first read it; hadn’t known that it was just another creepypasta. What made it worse was that the story had real video evidence to show how serious the story was. I was able to rationalize that someone had to have played with the code to make the video, but only after the story was over.

You know a little something about Game Theory, creepypasta, and Ben Drowned. It’s important for you to know these things because they’re somewhat related to Petscop, the game that we will never be able to play.

Petscop is only available to watch through YouTube as far as I’m aware. From the channel with the same name, the video shows that it’s a Playstation game from Sony’s very first Playstation console made by a fake company called Garalina in 1997. The case that the game is about didn’t happen until the year 2000 at least, which is why the consensus is that the game was purposely made in order to tell a story.

Lore is a huge thing in any game. Five Night’s At Freddy’s is a prime example of this (if The Legend Of Zelda isn’t). People would stitch together all sorts of clues from the game in order to create their own story about what happened. The game designer did it on purpose, filling in some more holes with each sequel of Freddy’s.

At any rate, this game seems to have the same purpose: using clues throughout the game to tell a story. The game itself doesn’t seem to have a real storyline other than to collect pets … until you enter a code given to you as a note. That code then shows you a world underneath.

The world underneath, and the game as a whole, tells the story of Candace Elizabeth Newmaker, adopted by Jeane Newmaker.

I’ve heard of this case before, having grown up in Colorado. It was something the adults would talk about when I was growing up. I didn’t pay too much attention to it because I was just a kid with no interest in the things adults liked to talk about (that’s obviously changed).

Because there is a limited amount of room available for me, I’ll be explaining the Newmaker case and the importance behind the YouTube video of the game in the next part. I don’t normally do this, so I hope you’ll stay tuned.